Fantasy jackpot

UConn business professor wins $2.5 million fantasy football windfall.

David Bergman was home in West Hartford on Dec. 20, keeping an eye on his daily fantasy football lineup while he and wife Lauren brushed the teeth of their two young children and tucked them into bed.

Around this time in New Orleans, Saints running back Alvin Kamara scored a fourth-quarter touchdown against the Chiefs That’s when it started to hit Bergman,

a UConn business professor, sports fan and man long fascinated by numbers and data. A rather typical Sunday was becoming one to change his life.

Bergman’s nine-player entry

— a team he named “theWhistlesGoWooo” — in the 2020 DraftKings Daily Fantasy Sports World Championship was at the top of the leaderboard, where it would remain. He finished ahead of 199 other qualifiers and earned the contest’s top prize of $2.5 million.

“It’s fun and exciting and a very strange feeling and a very happy one,” said Bergman, 37, who started at UConn in 2013 and teaches in the master’s of business analytics and project management program.

“It was so fun watching this lineup move from the middle of the pack after the 1 o’clock games, up to No. 1.”

Lucky guy, right? Sure, but not entirely.

A fantasy football accomplishment like this is not akin to having your name pulled in a raffle. It is the right combination of research and data analysis, almost always. It is a whole lot of research, even algorithms, an exploration of probability in advance of an afternoon spent with fingers crossed.

In a conversation

Friday, Bergman wouldn’t delve into specifics of his methods. But the odds of his success in daily fantasy sports being coincidental to his areas of expertise — and some of what he teaches at UConn — are the longest of long shots.

Bergman’s winning lineup: quarterback

Kyler Murray; running backs Kamara and

Chase Edmonds; receivers Emmanuel Sanders, DeAndre Hopkins and Calvin Ridley; tight end Durham Smythe; flex player Tony Pollard; and the Cowboys defense.

Bergman, who studied math at Stony Brook and earned a PhD in operations research at Carnegie Melon, was willing to share some general insight, noting that he made four selections that a sliver of his competition did.

For instance, in the field of 200 entries, just one other featured Edmonds and just two others featured Smythe and the Cowboys D. Only 13 other lineups included Ridley.

For those who haven’t subjected themselves to the torturous joy of fantasy sports in general, or daily fantasy sports specifically, the basic process is as follows: Participants select players at a certain value while remaining at or under a budget — Murray costs a lot more than Sam Darnold, for example — and those players are awarded points for individual accomplishments, such as touchdowns and yards gained.

Bergman, originally from White Plains, New York, has been playing standard fantasy football since his college days. He started playing daily fantasy on DraftKings, which has more than 8 million users, about three years ago.

He plays “leisurely but frequently,” saying his level of participation (in time and money invested) is “a hobby” and “depends on the week, depends on the matchups, depends on my time, depends on everything.” He wouldn’t discuss how much money he’s made or lost. Many contests are available for entry fees of $2 to $5.

A debate in recent years has raged over whether daily fantasy sports is gambling. It is. That’s my take. It is gambling where the informed and enlightened can increase their odds, but gambling nonetheless. Many serious players enter multiple lineups — there is often a cap of 20 — for competitions, based on specific formulas for increased chances for success.

Bergman, according to comments made on a DraftKings online celebration of his victory, had eight lineups in play Dec. 20. He wouldn’t get specific on fees, nor would he disclose how much money he pocketed after taxes.

A portion of the prize money will be set aside for his children’s college education. He’ll donate to charities, including Hands on Hartford, which benefits the city’s most economically challenged residents. He’ll plan trips when COVID-19 allows and Disney World — for the kids and just like any Super Bowl MVP — will be among them.

Mostly, though, he’ll keep going on about life as usual in education, his real passion, helping UConn students work toward degrees and enter the workforce with an understanding for the partnership between business and analytics. He called UConn’s program “one of the most highly regarded in the world,” noting the university’s commitment to this field, including plans for a new data science initiative based in the university’s Stamford branch.

“Businesses today are striving to use the mountains of data they have to inform better decisions,” Bergman said. “Analytics that will show them something counter to what they’ve always done . ... In any discipline and any domain, people are loving the application.”

Analytics have changed everything in sports from the way games are played to the way ticket sales operations run.

“Think about basketball,” Bergman said. “Analytics people uncovered that taking longrange two-point jump shots is less of an expected reward than taking a 3-pointer . ... In football, there’s more going for it on fourth down. This is all based on analytics professionals analyzing historical data.”

Some advice: “Try not to pick based on who you like,” he said. “In March Madness, it is commonly known, if you’re in a pool … in the Northeast, don’t pick teams from the Northeast because there will be many more people in your pool that pick from the Northeast. Differentiate yourself.” ... That’s very similar to [the approach for] my lineup.”

Bergman cashed in largely because Edmonds, Smythe, the Cowboys D and Ridley performed so well, accounting for 74.9 of his team’s 208.24 points. He started believing he had a realistic chance to win upon realizing that he had more players in his lineup who had yet to play the late games than participants he was trailing.

“It was amazing to slowly see it creep up,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s quite hit me yet. It gives me an opportunity to help others more than we already have. I’ve never had the opportunity to give that much money, but now I do.”

He’s won before. “Marginal success,” he said. “Until this.”